(NPR) — The debate over whether the Bush Administration’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on admitted or suspected terrorist detainees led to the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden’s has largely fallen along partisan lines.

Seeking vindication for President George W. Bush’s approval of harsher interrogation methods, Republicans have generally argued that the information that led to the tracking of a bin Laden courier all the way to the terrorist leader’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound initially came from the harsher interrogation methods approved by President George W. Bush.

Fierce critics of Bush during his time in office for signing off on interrogations, including waterboarding, Democrats, have sought to minimize any importance such harsh questioning methods may have played in finally getting bin Laden.

On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) weighed in, practically speaking, on the side of Democrats which was unavoidable since he was coming down on the side opposed to the use of torture.

In the specific case of bin Laden, McCain said he was told by CIA director and Defense secretary-designate Leon Panetta, that the information that led to the terrorist leader’s demise didn’t result from enhanced interrogation.

He’s either lying about his conversation with Panetta or he was lied to because Panetta has already said intel from waterboarded detainees helped lead to Bin Laden.

WASHINGTON (NBC News) — Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.

Panetta, who in a 2009 CIA confirmation hearing declared “waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong,” said Tuesday that debate about its use will continue.

“Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question,” Panetta said.

“In the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here,” Panetta said. “We had a multiple source — a multiple series of sources — that provided information with regards to the situation. Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees but we also had information from other sources as well.”